IMI expert and activist Iryna Zemlyana had to leave Warsaw after being swarmed with death threats following an incident that occurred at a 9 May rally, where Russia’s Ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev was doused with fake blood, Iryna Zemlyana reported in a Facebook post.
Zemlyana said that all her personal data, including her passport number, phone number, address in Ukraine, e-mail, and all her social media accounts, were posted on Russian Telegram channels within hours after the rally with a call to “exterminate” her. Zemlyana has been added to the Russian “war criminals” database.
“This is what’s been happening after I doused myself with beetroot juice on 9 May in Warsaw. The Russians turned out to be very sensitive, and are ready to murder for their ambassador getting a little Polish borscht on himself after standing close to me. I’m receiving thousands of messages with threats. I have never seen such a massive attack in my life. … The messages threaten to kill me, maim me, rape me, etc., and contain a bunch of insults. ALL of my messenger apps are swarmed with these texts. An unknown number calls my phone every three minutes, an email comes to my inbox every minute, all my inbox is completely flooded (I still don’t know how I’m going to do any work), the phone is unusable. 25 thousand bots followed me on Instagram in a couple of hours and all that,” she wrote.
Iryna Zemlyana added that she and her lawyer has contacted the Polish police to report the threats. “They believe the situation is serious. I was forced to leave Warsaw accompanied by security guards because staying there was dangerous,” she said.
On 9 May, Ukrainian activists in Warsaw interferred as Sergey Andreyev was laying down a wreath at the Soviet soldiers memorial, dousing him with fake blood. Polish officials have called Ambassador Andreyev’s actions honoring the monument to Soviet soldiers “provocative,” and the response by Ukrainians “understandable.”
